How to Raise a Slave

Train your child never to speak unless spoken to.

Never allow your child to have an opinion.
Do everything for your child from birth to adulthood.
Punish them for their failures more than you praise their effort.

Allow them no opportunity to find a different way.
Give them all the answers.
Solve every problem for them.

Teach them religion but discourage questioning.
Keep them disconnected from their history.
Erase their culture. Their language. Their context.

Teach them to ignore their emotions and bury them.
Show them survival is about self, not community.

Teach them to work hard for others and never to build anything for themselves.
Make them comfortable with mediocrity.
Celebrate them only when they colour between the lines.

Encourage them to raise children the same way.

How to Raise a Rebel

Give them a name that speaks destiny into their lives every time it is spoken.

Raise them to know they are an individual with agency.
Teach them they have a voice. And let them use it.

Allow them to try. To fail. To figure things out.
Encourage them in the middle of the process.
Celebrate effort as loudly as you celebrate success.

Teach them discipline and delayed gratification.
Raise them to pursue mastery.

Practice honouring elders without silencing their voice.
Remind them they come from kings. From queens. From builders. From rebels.
This is their identity.

Show them how to seek God for themselves.
Let their faith guide them, not control them.

Teach them to create with their hands.
To build. To grow. To bring what they imagine into the real world.

Raise them to think. To question. To own.

Speak life over them until they believe it for themselves.
Teach them to feel deeply without losing themselves.
Remind them often of their greatness and their responsibility to others.

Let them colour outside the lines.
That is where new paths are made.

Remember 1768!